Ten fixes for Vista's worst features
Just ask anyone who's seen Spiderman 3; good ideas seldom survive bad execution.
The developers at Microsoft had some great ideas while designing Vista, but poor implementation turned many of those great concepts into lousy, annoying features. To be fair, Vista inherited most of these well-intentioned flaws from earlier versions of Windows. But it either failed to fix them or didn't even try.
Here are ten of Vista's most irritating flops, along with quick fixes and workarounds. Let's start with one that's absolutely unique to Vista, and almost universally hated by those who use it.
User Account Control
People do some things in Windows--such as install destructive applications or edit the Registry--that deserve a stern "Are you sure you know what you're doing" warning. These situations may even warrant having to prove you're an administrator before you're allowed to continue.
But Vista's User Account Control (UAC) fails to give enough feedback to users; there's often no way to know why a given act is considered dangerous. Even worse, Vista's designer's went overboard, forcing people to click through a UAC prompt to set the clock or manually start a backup. The result: People get annoyed and learn to ignore the UAC, effectively removing any protection it might provide.
Here are three imperfect ways to stop UAC annoyances. One minor problem they all share: Every so often when you boot, Vista will warn you that the UAC is off. You can just ignore the warnings, in much the same way you've already learned to ignore the UAC itself.
1. Just turn it off. This easy fix works well in an administrator account, but it renders standard accounts almost unusable. Select Start, Control Panel, User Accounts, and click Turn User Account Control on or off. Select Continue at the UAC prompt, and on the next screen, uncheck Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer. Click OK and reboot.
2. Use TweakUAC. This free program can turn UAC off for Administrator accounts while leaving it on for everyone else, which is a relatively safe and convenient compromise. Just run the program, select Switch UAC to the quiet mode, and click OK.
3. Fine-tune your system's UAC settings. This only works in Vista Business or Ultimate. Select Start, type secpol.msc, and press Enter. Navigate the left pane as if it was Windows Explorer to the Security Settings\Local Policy\Security Options folder. In the right pane, scroll down to the bottom for nine options controlling how UAC behaves. If you're not sure what these settings actually change, see the helpful guide at Walker News.
The One-Way Firewall
Windows' built-in firewall has always suffered from the same flaw: While blocking suspicious stuff that comes in, it does nothing about what your PC sends out. Since an infected PC can mass-mail spam and forward your credit card numbers to someone without your better interest in mind, that's an important shortcoming.
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Acronis True Image is
Acronis True Image is another great piece of backup software that isn't image based (although it can be if you want, and it can back up partitions with any file system). It lets you produce incremental or full backups, and restore individual files by mounting backup data as drive letters in Windows. Like Genie, it's also $50 and has a 15-day fully functional free trial before you buy.It can be found here:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
Oh, and it also lets you
Oh, and it also lets you back up only certain folders or files if you want, certain partitions, certain physical disks. The Home Edition also lets you back up only system settings like the registry or other info, and has special options to just let you back up things such as email.As for a Firewall and other protection; if you are only using your machine at home, a router with a good hardware firewall can't be beat. For software solutions, Kaspersky Internet Security has always treated me well. KIS includes anti-virus software, web traffic scanning, application access filters, etc., all easily configurable so you can tweak it how you like it without it interfering with your normal day-to-day usage of your computer.
KIS Home edition can be found here:
http://usa.kaspersky.com/products_services/HomeProducts.php
It's a bit pricey at $80 but it's well worth it, especially if you're the type that has about 30 different "anti-malware" and anti-virus programs installed on your machine. Uninstall them all, kill the Windows firewall, and KIS is all you need.
the only real problem I have
the only real problem I have is the UAC the rest of your points is just winging